How to Manage Large Image Libraries with iPhoto 2

A question that I hear often at iPhoto workshops and user group
meetings is, "How can I manage large image catalogs with iPhoto?" It's
widely known that iPhoto bogs down when picture libraries swell to
multiple gigabytes in size. And since 4-megapixel cameras (and larger) are
commonplace these days, it doesn't take long to top off your hard drive with pictures,
especially since it's already brimming full of music and movies.

Fortunately iPhoto 2
includes a few key improvements to help manage large image catalogs. In
this article, I'll show you how to combine these enhancements with some
third-party applications to build a robust solution for handling mountains
of snapshots, scans, and illustrations.

The Importance of Optical Media

You'll notice that when you're in Organize mode, you see the
standard Apple Burn icon in the lower right corner of iPhoto
2. This new function is vital to my strategy for managing and archiving
image libraries.

Prior to iPhoto 2, the only way you could burn a Photo Library to
optical media was to do so at the Finder level. And once you did, iPhoto
could not read your Photo Library directly from the CD or DVD. Therefore
you had to copy the library back to your hard drive, rename it, then
relaunch iPhoto. What a pain in the USB port that was.

But things have changed. You can burn entire libraries, or portions
thereof, to CD and DVD from within the iPhoto application. And what's even
better is that you can later use those libraries directly from the disc
without having to copy them to your hard drive and relaunching iPhoto. Now
your disc of images appears right beneath your Photo Library much in the
same way a CD appears in iTunes.

Figure 2. When you insert a CD or DVD containing a Photo Library that you burned previously in iPhoto, it appears right beneath your existing Photo Library, much in the way music CDs appear in iTunes.

Figure 3. Click on the triangle and all of your custom albums from the CD library are revealed and ready to use. They will be a different color than your existing Photo Library.

Before I explain any more about the strategy for managing massive
volumes of pictures with iPhoto, I should say that if you're serious
enough about digital photography to have this many images, you probably
should get a Mac with a DVD burner built in or at least purchase a
third-party unit that you can plug in. I find that the limited capacity of CDs
(700 MB) is impractical for storing image files, especially compared to
DVDs that are the same size, but hold 4.7 GB. The name of the game is
efficiency, and DVDs are just better for digital photography.

Regardless of which type of optical media you use, I recommend that you
take advantage of this new feature in iPhoto 2. You could store all of
your Photo Libraries on a separate FireWire hard drive. In fact, that's
exactly what I do. But those are strictly my working libraries. I
also have all those images on DVDs for archiving purposes.

You don't want
to risk losing all of your pictures to a hard drive crash. And if you want
to share a particular library with someone else, or among your own
machines, it's much easier to hand over a DVD than schlep around your
massive FireWire drive (iPods being the notable exception). More on all of
this later.

Limiting the Size of a Photo Library

If you have a DVD burner, you can let your Photo Library swell to a
little over 4 GBs before archiving it to disc and cleaning it off your
hard drive. But even with the most powerful Mac, that's too much
information for iPhoto to handle with speedy efficiency, or even sluggish efficiency.

More powerful machines such as the current dual processors should be
able to manage libraries up to 2 GBs. If you notice performance
degradation with that many photos, then scale back the size of your
library accordingly. All modern Macs should be able to handle at least 1
GB image libraries.

As your library grows, I recommend that you use intermediate back ups
to a separate hard disc. Simply drag your iPhoto Library folder
located inside your Pictures directory to the hard drive. If you're
managing multiple libraries with iPhoto
Library Manager, then be sure to keep them all backed up as you make
changes to them. You can also burn parts of your library to CD, but that's a much slower process.

Once your Photo Library has reached the size where performance is
beginning to lag, then use the burn function in iPhoto 2 to copy it to
your archival media. I recommend that you make two copies: one for home and one
for a remote location. If something unforeseen happens, you won't lose
your entire image collection.

Figure 4. How can you tell the size of your Photo Library? Simply click on
Photo Library to highlight it, then read the data displayed beneath
the date at the bottom of the column.

Figure 5. Adding picture information by
creating custom albums and filling in the Comments field enables you to
more easily track down photos later when the library no longer resides on
your hard drive.

Add Metadata to Your Photo Libraries

As you'll see when I pull all the pieces together, a key part of this
strategy is being able to search across discs to find the one containing
the pictures you're looking for. The best way to create searchable data is
to make custom albums, create unique names for your pictures, and add text
to the comments field. This forces iPhoto to include this data within the
Photo Library enabling you to catalog it for retrieval later.

As a related note, your camera creates lots of metadata on its
own. Make sure your date and time are set correctly so that it records
accurate information. For more on the value of camera metadata, see my
article, Use Metadata
to Improve Your Pictures.

Find Good Cataloging Software

Now the pieces of this strategy are starting to come together. You
have iPhoto libraries full of searchable data stored on high volume DVDs
(and possibly FireWire drives, too). When you want to find a particular
photo on one of these discs, how do you do it?

Personally, I like CDFinder by Norbert Doerner
for cataloging and retrieving my discs. The application will also catalog
hard drives and other media, so it's quite versatile.

As with any search tool, the better information you've included with
your images, the easier it will be to locate them. If nothing else, create
custom albums for your various photo shoots. If you have time, add data to
the Comments field too. By doing so, you give CDFinder, or whatever app
you're using, a decent chance of returning accurate results from your
search.

Pulling It All Together

OK, you have your tools in place, here's how to build your
system:

Add lots of metadata to your picture libraries.

When your library size grows to the point that iPhoto performance
begins to lag, click on Photo Library to highlight it, then click
the Burn button (while in Organize mode).

Figure 6. Enter a name for your library disk.

Enter a
distinct name for your library disc in the Disc Name field. See Figure 6.

Click the Burn button again to begin the writing process. I
recommend that you burn at least two discs and store one in a separate
location.

Test all discs by inserting them into a computer with iPhoto
launched. The disc should appear in iPhoto as shown in Figure 7. Note that
in iPhoto the disc has the distinct name you gave it, but in the Finder it
simply says iPhoto Disc.

Figure 7. Testing a new disk. Notice that the disc appears in the Finder as iPhoto Disc, but is labeled in your Photo Library with the distinct name you gave it before burning.

Catalog your newly burned disc with CDFinder or an application of
your choice. As mentioned previously, the default name for the disc will
be iPhoto Disc. Once it's cataloged, rename it in CDFinder to the
custom name that appears in iPhoto.

Figure 8. Renaming the disk. When CDFinder first identifies the disc, it will label it with the "Finder" name, iPhoto Disc.

Figure 9. To change the "catalog name" to match the name that iPhoto uses for the disc, just highlight it and retype.

Store the disc in a 3-ring binder with optical disc inserts. Make
sure the binder and the discs themselves are clearly labeled with the same
names you entered in CDFinder.

Quit iPhoto and drag the iPhoto Library folder (inside of
your Pictures directory) to the trash. When you relaunch iPhoto, it
will create a brand new iPhoto Library folder that you can populate
with fresh pictures.

When you need to retrieve a photo, launch CDFinder and search using
keywords that you likely used for album names or in the Comments
field. This is where labeling your discs on the outside is important so
you know which one to pull once CDFinder gives you the search
results.

Pull the disc from your storage binder and insert it into a
computer that has iPhoto launched.

Use the image as needed.

How to Handle Scanned Images

If your photo management process includes using scanned images, you can
tweak the process I've outlined with just one minor adjustment.

I recommend that you organize your scanned images in the Finder and
create folders for them with descriptive names. Then all you have to do is
drag each folder to the Photo Library column in iPhoto, and the
application will import the images and create a custom album with the same
name as the folder containing the original images.

I usually burn those organized master images to DVD, just for an added
measure of protection. For many this is overkill, but I like having these
original scans that's never been touched by any application.

Final Thoughts

Many people seem surprised that I use iPhoto 2 for my photography
business. I've tried different methods over the years, and of course I'm
still keeping an eye on new applications to handle these tasks.

The reason why I've stuck with iPhoto is because I really like the
variety of output options, such as web pages to my .mac account, client
CDs using the BetterHTML plug-in, one-click print ordering, custom linen
books, and QuickTime slideshows. I also like the iPhoto interface and am
comfortable with the way it handles my picture metadata, both created by
the camera and the additional information I enter via custom albums and
the Comments field.

And now that iPhoto 2 is AppleScriptable (see my article, Automating iPhoto 2 with
AppleScript for more details), iPhoto makes even more sense as the
central repository for all of your digital images. I use an AppleScript to
automate Photoshop adjustments to my iPhoto images. It works
fabulously.

But no matter which system you use for archiving your digital images,
please stay on top of it. Losing a Word document is bad enough, but
letting a hard drive crash steal your precious photo memories is a
heart-wrenching experience you'll want to avoid.